Getting started on Twitter

This is a Twitter guide for most of us. Celebrities, politicians and journalists will use Twitter in a very different way than most of us.

I’m not a guru or even a great guide writer so I will just start, you can ask questions (via Twitter) and I will improve this as we go.

Why?

Twitter is *not* like any other communication method. It is super efficient for discovery and diversity of information.

Every other form of communications from voice (ie. conversation, lectures, speeches, etc) to all the various forms of writing (books, news, blogs, letters, email, chat, etc); all of these have a single source at any given moment and one or more listeners.

Twitter allows a listener (or reader) to actually listen to and even respond to multiple sources all at once. Of course it’s still actually one at a time, but Twitter enables ‘following’ many sources effectively all at once more successfully than any tool before it. Tech nerds might want to correct me referring to various tech solutions that preceded Twitter (ie. BBS, Net News, Reddit and many other examples).

Some might think that your Facebook News Feed is ‘the same’ but really it’s not close. Facebook has it’s value and I use both.

How?

Imagine you are at the most interesting event or gathering you’ve ever attended and you can sit in a comfortable spot and sip and nibble your favorite treats while following however many conversations you find interesting. You find more interesting people and discussions for whatever reasons you choose. You drop in on and walk away from conversations without concern or reservation.

+ It is about who you follow and NOT about what you tweet.
+ It is strange and perhaps confusing at first.
+ Lurk mostly, just scanning and reading, maybe marking favorites.
+ Limit your retweets to start with, to avoid overdoing that.
+ Don’t give any thought to who or how many followers you have.

When you follow someone you can go discover who they follow and perhaps who follows them. It is as easy to unfollow as it is to follow and since none of this is based on personal relationships (like Facebook) it doesn’t really matter; follow, unfollow and follow again later.

Now just go back to https://twitter.com and start reading. If you see a source that looks interesting follow it. For now just read and follow and read and follow.

Send me a reply on Twitter to ask a question or just say Hey and I’ll follow you. Then you can ask me questions via Direct Message if you don’t want everyone to see your question. However, I encourage asking them via replies so others can see them.